1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to user interface menus in computers and electronic devices and, more particularly, to methods, systems, and computer program products for displaying contact information with a user interface.
2. Background and Relevant Art
A contact management system is generally referred to in this application as a system, directory or database that contains contact information about people, groups, organizations, businesses, or any other identifiable entity, each of which is referred to herein as a contact.
Contact management systems are extensively used in the computer industry to store and display contact information that is pertinent to the corresponding software applications to which they belong. For example, email applications typically include directories for storing and displaying the email addresses of contacts that can be emailed. Money management applications typically include directories for storing contact information about related financial contacts, such as, for example, banks, accounting service organizations, financial planning organizations, and so forth. Other examples of software applications that utilize contact management systems include time management applications, instant messaging applications, network gaming applications, business directory applications, telephony applications, and so forth.
Contact management systems are also widely used in many hardware devices that are not considered traditional computers. For example, many telephones, facsimile devices, and photocopying devices also include contact management systems for storing contact information that may be used to perform a desired function such as initiating a telephone call, a facsimile transmission, or a telecopy transmission.
One problem encountered by existing contact management systems, however, is that the large variety of specialized and disparate contact management systems can make it difficult for a user to quickly access all available contact information for the various applications at the same time. This can be a problem, for example, when a user desires to identify all available means for making contact with a given entity because it may require the user to separately access various directories from many different contact management systems in order to obtain the desired contact information. For example, it may be necessary to access a telephone directory to obtain the home or cell telephone number for the contact, an email directory to obtain a primary email address for the contact, a business directory to obtain the business telephone number, and business email address of the entity, and so forth.
Having disparate contact management systems can also be a problem for obtaining different types of contact information about different contacts. For example, it may be desirable to view the email address of a first contact, the business telephone number of a second contact, and the cell telephone number of a third contact. If the desired contact data for each of the different entities is located in a different contact management system of different applications, then each application will have to be accessed to obtain the desired information, thereby requiring the undesirable expenditure of time and resources.
Searches and queries for specific contacts or contact information must also be performed separately on each of the various contact management systems. This can particularly be a problem when a user has forgotten in which of the contact management system directories the contact information is stored.
To overcome some of these problems, some contact management systems are configured to store more contact information then is required for the corresponding application. For example, an email directory may be configured to store the addresses, phone numbers and other information about the various contacts stored therein. However, the interfaces and limitations for displaying contact information typically vary from one application to the next, thereby making it difficult to become customized to the various contact management systems. Furthermore, it would be somewhat onerous to duplicatively enter every piece of contact information about every contact into every utilized contact management system, even if it were possible. This redundant storage would also represent undesirable and unnecessary expenditure of resources.
Yet another problem with existing systems is that they lack extensibility. In particular, existing contact management systems are dedicated to particular applications and are not extensible to other applications for which they are not originally created. This inhibits the sharing and searching of contact information from the various contact information directories of the various applications.
Accordingly, there currently exists a need in the art for improved contact management systems and interfaces for accessing contact information.